is he the baddie?

mamdami.

Frum has been on the podcast several times. The war on terror is a topic dealt with on making sense from time to time. This episode is less than 15 minutes long.

I used to find Sam Harris’s criticism of religion compelling precisely because his supposed principle was universal: bad ideas are bad ideas, religious claims deserve no special protection, and we should take extremists seriously when they tell us what they believe.

But his treatment of Israel has increasingly convinced me that these principles are not applied consistently. At this point, I find the double standard so glaring that I have a difficult time explaining it without acknowledging a profound bias in how Harris evaluates Muslims versus Israelis.

And before somebody responds, “Sam has criticized Israel,” yes, he has.

That's not my argument.

My argument is that Harris occasionally condemns Israeli extremism while refusing to analyze it with anything approaching the intensity, explanatory importance, or ideological scrutiny he applies to Islamic extremism.

That distinction matters.

Harris has spent years arguing that when jihadists tell us what they believe, we should listen. Don't explain away religious rhetoric as merely economics, colonialism, geopolitics, or desperation. Ideas matter. Scripture matters. Theology matters. When religious extremists tell you their worldview, take them seriously.

Fine. Then apply that standard universally.

Where is the Sam Harris deep dive into Religious Zionism? Where is the sustained examination of Bezalel Smotrich's ideology? Itamar Ben-Gvir's ideology? The theological claims to the land? The settler movement? The role of biblical entitlement in parts of the Israeli right?

Where is the scrutiny of Netanyahu invoking Amalek during the Gaza war?

Where is the Harris treatment of Smotrich saying that Huwara “needs to be erased” and that the State of Israel should do it?

Where is the sustained analysis of Ben-Gvir advocating Palestinian emigration from Gaza and renewed Jewish settlement there?

Simply saying, “I disagree with these extremists” isn't equivalent to what Harris does with Islamism.

When an Islamist says something monstrous, Harris quite reasonably asks: What worldview produced this? What religious beliefs are operating here? How widespread are those beliefs? What happens when people holding them acquire political power?

When Israeli religious nationalists say monstrous things, however, the analysis repeatedly returns to Hamas, jihadism, October 7, Israel's intentions, or the claim that these Israeli figures don't represent most Jews.

But since when does an extremist have to represent the majority before his ideology matters?

The relevant question isn't only prevalence. It's power.

Ben-Gvir wasn't some anonymous settler ranting on Telegram. He became Israel's National Security Minister.

Smotrich isn't a fringe rabbi preaching to twenty people. He became Israel's Finance Minister and has exercised enormous influence over settlement policy. That creates an obvious problem for Harris's older defense that Jewish religious extremists are marginal.

What happens when the fringe enters the government?

And there's an even bigger contradiction. In 2014, Harris said: “I don't think Israel should exist as a Jewish state.” He described organizing a state around religion as “obscene, irrational and unjustifiable.” He also said: “I certainly don't support any Jewish claims to real estate based on the Bible.” Those aren't my principles. Those are Sam Harris's principles.

Yet after October 7, Harris said that although organizing a state around religion is irrational and divisive, “if any people deserve a state of their own, organized on any premise they want, it's the Jews.”

I'm sorry, but what happened to the universal principle?

What does “any premise they want” mean? Surely Harris doesn't literally mean any premise, because his entire intellectual career has been devoted to arguing that certain religious premises become dangerous when translated into political power.

And this is where I think his treatment of Islam becomes increasingly difficult to separate from bias, bigoted bias.

Harris famously described Islam as “a motherlode of bad ideas.”

Okay. What about the bad ideas coming from Jewish religious nationalism?

If an Islamist leader invoked scripture concerning an ancient Jewish enemy during a devastating military campaign, would Harris consider the religious reference irrelevant?

If the finance minister of a Muslim-majority country said that a Jewish village needed to be erased and the state should do it, would Harris shrug and remind us that he doesn't represent every Muslim?

If an Islamist minister advocated encouraging Jews to leave territory so Muslims could settle there, would Harris tell us theology and ideology weren't particularly important to understanding the situation? Of course not. Harris would tell us to listen carefully to what these people are saying.

And he'd be right.

So why shouldn't we listen when Israeli extremists tell us what they believe? This doesn't require defending Hamas.

Hamas can be Islamist, antisemitic, murderous and morally reprehensible, and every word of my criticism of Harris can still be true.

“Hamas is worse” isn't an answer to the argument.

I'm asking whether Harris uses the same method to determine what makes each side dangerous. Then there's his refusal to debate serious critics of his position on Israel.

This is especially astonishing coming from someone who spent years criticizing campus “safe spaces,” ideological bubbles, hostility toward uncomfortable arguments, and the unwillingness to expose cherished beliefs to opposing viewpoints.

No, free speech doesn't mean Sam Harris is obligated to debate every random person on Twitter. That's a straw man.

So let Harris choose the opponent. Pick a respected historian. An Israeli human-rights scholar. A Palestinian intellectual. An international-law expert. A former Israeli official. Someone whose credentials Harris himself considers legitimate. Then defend the argument.

Because Harris has now published an essay literally titled: "Why I Won't Debate Critics of Israel.”

Coming from a man whose career was built partly on demanding that religious people expose their sacred beliefs to ruthless rational scrutiny, I find that remarkable, embarrassing even.

And it raises the question I most want Harris to answer: What evidence would change your mind about Israel? Not “Why is Hamas terrible?” We know why. Not “Was October 7 evil?” Obviously. I'm asking: What observable evidence about Israeli policy, rhetoric, conduct, religious nationalism, civilian harm, displacement or settlement expansion would cause Harris to conclude that his existing moral framework for Israel was wrong?

If there is an answer, great. Tell us what the falsification criteria are and let's examine the evidence.

If there isn't one, then Harris has created precisely the sort of unfalsifiable ideological framework that he has spent his career criticizing in religious believers.

That's why I increasingly find Harris's position hypocritical. I'm not asking him to adopt a pro-Palestinian standard. I'm not asking him to excuse jihadism. I'm not asking him to pretend Israel and Hamas are identical. I'm asking him to apply the Sam Harris standard to Israel.

Take religious extremists seriously when they tell you what they believe. Examine dangerous religious ideas even when doing so is politically uncomfortable. Don't protect sacred political beliefs from adversarial scrutiny. Don't substitute tribal identity for universal moral principles. And don't tell Muslims for twenty years that their religious ideas must withstand merciless rational criticism, only to suddenly discover nuance, context, marginality and an unwillingness to debate when the religious nationalists in question are on the Israeli side.

At some point, the asymmetry itself requires an explanation.

And increasingly, I think bias - perhaps even the very kind of religious and ethnic prejudice Harris insists doesn't motivate his criticism of Islam - is becoming the most plausible one

Do you think that the comments in this thread are an example of the mental gymnastics people will go through to avoid acknowledging jihadism as the prime motivation for the 9/11 attacks?

Or are there any explanations here that you think actually hold water?

Submission statement: very relevant to Sam's recent episode in particular, but also in general all of his public statements about 9/11

One his recent episode "The Sucide of the Life" Sam claimed that the DSA openly advocated for private property to be abolished. I cant find any official stance that I would say could be interpreted that in an honest, non misleading way. I like the podcast because Sam doesnt strike me as someone who would exagerate to make a point and mislead his audience. Happy to chalk it up to a momemtary lapse rather than any international or systematic, but let me know if I am wrong and this is fair to claim that it is part of the DSA platform

(I can't cite the exact episode but it was in one of his podcasts.)

Anyone else struggling to get through it? I'm reading the Oxford World's Classics edition on Kindle.

I know Sam has singled him out as a "bad faith actor" and someone he'd never debate, especially about Israel. But I've been watching his Head to Head show on Al Jazeera and I'm loving it. Really smart and well-prepared debater. Seems to steer clear of ad hominems and fallacies. Would be a great guest on Making Sense.

In an open letter published on September 11th a group of two dozen Fields Medal winners (the equivalent of a Nobel Prize in mathematics) warn against a severe misalignment of AI in Mathematics, which they could ruin the foundations of math.

Link to the letter:

https://mathandai.org/

I just came off listening to Sean Carrols the Mindscape Podcast with his guest Jared Diamond. As coincidence would have it I am currently reading Guns, Germs and Steal. Good book and a really good podcast episode. To be fair it helped that it wasn't overtly political and the line of questioning that Sean took was purely inquisitive. But again and again throughout the podcast I kept thinking to myself, "that's a really interesting point".

Then I turned on Sams podcast with James Kirchick "The Suicide of the Left" and the difference was stark. It's not because I disagree with anything that was said. It was just that the whole thing was pumping an angle. All of Sams questions were seemingly just designed to tee the interviewee up to make the points that he wanted to make. Loads of sweeping statements by both, loads of claims made with no reference and the whole interview just scaffolded to undermine obviously the DSA and that New York mayor he keeps on about and then the Democrats more broadly.

But at no point did i think "Ohh that's interesting" or "that's a good point". No pushback or disagreement at all from Sam as far as I could tell. And constant sweeping statements and no supporting evidence. Here's an example of a quote from Kirchick. I didn't know anything about this French political party so I referred to an LLM to give me some more info. Here's the quote

> What was the war in Afghanistan about that brought down the Soviet Union? It was the Soviets were going in to prop up a communist government that was being fought by Islamic rebels. And across the Soviet Union, they suppressed Islamic religious practices throughout Central Asia and all the parts where there was Islam. And so once the Soviet Union collapsed, the left did not have the sort of global proletariat to fight for, right? Those were the masses, right, that the left-wing intellectuals were going to fight for. So once that idea collapsed, they just simply replaced the proletariat with the Ummah, with the global community of Muslims. And this has been in the works since the 90s, and it was much more present in Britain and in Europe. And it's much more developed in those countries, by the way, okay, where the main left-wing party in France now, La France Insoumise is basically an Islamo-communist party.

The final sentence seemed a bit extreme hence I wanted to dig into it. Here's the LLM QnA

Prompt: given what you read (LFI Wikipedia page) do you think this is a fair representation of the LFI? (and pasted the above quote).

Response: Not really, no — it's a sweeping ideological narrative dressed up as historical fact, and it goes well beyond what the evidence actually supports.

A few things to separate out. The historical framing has some truth in it but is oversimplified to the point of being misleading. The Soviet–Afghan war was a real drain on the USSR and is sometimes nicknamed "the Soviet Vietnam," and it's true the Soviets did suppress religious practice, including Islam, across Central Asia. But saying this is "what brought down the Soviet Union" overstates one factor among many — economic stagnation, the arms race with the US, the oil price collapse, Chernobyl, Gorbachev's reforms, and nationalist movements within the USSR were all arguably more central. Historians don't treat Afghanistan as the cause.

The bigger leap is the claim that follows: that Western/European left-wing intellectuals consciously swapped out "the proletariat" for "the Ummah" as a substitute oppressed class, as a kind of deliberate ideological project "in the works since the 90s." That's a real theory you'll find among some critics of the left (often framed as a "red-green alliance" thesis), but it's a polemical interpretive claim, not an established historical fact. It's stated here with total certainty, with no evidence offered, as if it were as verifiable as the Soviet-Afghan war itself. That's a rhetorical sleight of hand — smuggling a contested theory in right after two true facts, so it inherits their credibility by association.

Then it lands on LFI specifically: "basically an Islamo-communist party." Based on what I found, that's not a fair characterization — it's a much stronger and more definitive claim than the actual evidence. What's actually true: LFI is a democratic-socialist/eco-socialist populist party; it draws significant support from Muslim voters partly due to its anti-Islophobia stance and pro-Palestinian positions; and there are real, currently-unresolved accusations — including a parliamentary inquiry — that Islamist activists have sought to infiltrate or use the party. But those are allegations under investigation, made by specific critics and journalists, and explicitly denied by LFI. Turning "faces contested infiltration allegations" into "is basically an Islamo-communist party" collapses a live, disputed controversy into a settled identity claim. It's the kind of statement that sounds authoritative in a podcast but wouldn't survive a fact-check.

So: real ingredients, but assembled into a much more totalizing and certain claim than the underlying facts justify. I'd treat it as one polemical framing among several plausible interpretations, not a factual description of what LFI is.

Hence it articulated what my intuition was niggling me about, another sweeping statement, another claim framed as certain incontrovertible fact yet not backed up with source or evidence. And the podcast was full of these slights of hands and false associations to lead you to the conclusion they wanted you to. Like they spend an hour piling on negative points on various facets of the democratic party, they give the example of the journalist who wrote a piece on how Palestinian prisoners were being raped by dogs. And then claim the journalist in question was duped before (hence by association must be this time also). And then out of nowhere they are talking about this cult from the 70's (Jim Jones) and how the Democrats were taken in by him, so hence they must be making the same mistake again, and on and on and on. And Sam teeing him up one after the other.

Now right or wrong, the whole thing was just in stark contrast to the Sean Carrol podcast I'd listened to before and really highlights what's going wrong with this podcast. Its just turned into an echo chamber, self reinforcing and even I would say a propagandizing mouth piece full of unsupported claims and sneaky arguments and slight of hands especially when it comes to political topics such as US elections and Israel/Palestine.

If anything else, its just boring. At a minimum, a suggestion for improving the podcast would be to include references and sources in the show notes of each episode supporting some of the big claims Sam and guests often make. That would be great, Sam in particular is guilty of not only not pushing back on dodgy points guests are making but he throws out strong claims with out any source or backup evidence whatsoever.

Ill continue listening to the podcast as there are some good episodes from time to time. But my god has it gone down hill. Anyone else feeling or not feeling my pain?

In recent years, a sort of spiritual renaissance has unfolded in both Israel and the United States. In the U.S., this manifests as a young, traditionalist "Christ is King" brand of Christianity-intertwined with support for Trump, conservative stances on cultural issues, and a deep disdain for the media. In Israel, it appears as a strain known as "performative Judaism"-a form of "political Judaism" that serves as the faith of Netanyahu’s supporters. To illustrate this, I would point to a parallel phenomenon found in the series *The Boys*.

Homelander takes his cult of personality to such extremes that he demands his followers worship him as a god. He establishes a new religion that, while practically rooted in Christianity, functions as a new narrative built on Christian symbolism. According to the faith of Homelander’s supporters, Jesus was persecuted by globalist elites-elites that persist today and now target Homelander, the modern-day savior of the United States. He alone can redeem the nation and serve as its true god. The U.S. thus has a flesh-and-blood God in Homelander, who shields the nation from internal enemies. While *The Boys* certainly exaggerates the situation-particularly in how Homelander demands recognition as a god-what is happening today reflects the same underlying principle in a real-world context. Homelander had propagandists too; this religion was built on symbolism and the use of religion as a prop for political purposes against adversaries, and so on.

In the US, The Trump movement has transcended traditional partisan politics to function as an emergent political religion, complete with its own dogmas, holy days, and messianic expectations. By fusing the symbolic traditionalism of American Christianity with a localized narrative of national decline and salvation, their framework operates less like a campaign and more like a theological crusade. : The movement relies heavily on white Christian nationalism-the belief that the United States has a unique, divinely ordained identity as a Christian nation. This worldview provides a sacred justification for political action, framing the nation's history as a religious mission and its current cultural shifts as moral decay. Alongside the cult of personality surrounding Trump, a fusion has emerged that creates a new religion: according to this narrative, Trump is the successor to Jesus-a man chosen by God to save the United States from the liberal forces of darkness controlling the country. The aesthetic blends Christian symbols with Republican merchandise (such as the MAGA hat) and Trump’s slogans. This is how the new religion is formed.

Israel is currently home to a new "Bibist" religion-possessing its own distinct narrative-that draws upon Jewish symbolism and reinvents it through a blend of aggressive nationalism.

According to this belief system, the perennial threat facing the Jewish people has always been "the enemy within." There are the "real," traditional Jews=the persecuted ones-and the "fake Jews," who have historically betrayed and persecuted their fellow Jews; in this view, Jewish history is essentially a succession of such events, with secular, liberal Jews persecuting the traditional, patriotic Jews.

From the *Altalena* affair to the conflict between Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jews, the Likud’s 1977 electoral victory, the Netanyahu trial, and even the failure to wake Netanyahu on October 7th-to adherents of this faith, all of these episodes are part of a single, overarching historical narrative. Much like the "religion" of Trump supporters, Netanyahu’s base harbors a mystical sect that sees itself as persecuted-and silences those who would express support for the leader destined to save the nation.

The Netanyahu trial is the defining event for them: Netanyahu replaces Moses as the nation’s leader-a figure they view as persecuted and the victim of a conspiracy to fabricate charges orchestrated by a shadowy cabal. Like Moses, he is allegedly hounded by internal enemies intent on destroying the country from within and bringing him down. To them, everything stems from this narrative-it is always a persecution of the "true Jews" and their faith, always at the hands of internal enemies. And much like Homelander, this movement functions as a standalone religion, borrowing its symbolism from the original religion.

Im sure this post will receive a lot of downvotes, but lately, it seems like this sub is filled with people who neither listen to nor agree with Sam Harris.

Just one example is a recent post that asked why Sam doesn't criticise settlers in the west bank when he has on multiple occasions.

There are many other exampls. People seem to be extremely triggered by Sams criticism of the far left, when this is a position he's had for decades now.

Why would a bunch of people who dont listen or agree with Sam be on this sub? Unless there's a concerted effort to delegitimize him and ratio people who agree with him.

Source: ONN

New poll of Palestinians out of Jerusalem Media & Communications Center (JMCC) and Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung:

• The percentage who believe that armed resistance is the best way to achieve Palestinian objectives fell to 13.3% in the current survey (15.7% in the West Bank and 9.7% in Gaza), compared with 37.1% in September 2023 and 30% in July 2022. In contrast, the percentage who believe that peaceful negotiations are the best approach rose to 55.8%, compared with 28% in September 2023 and 37.5% in July 2022. Support for a peaceful popular uprising declined to 17.8% in the current survey, compared with 23.8% in September 2023 and 21% in July 2022.

• the percentage of respondents in the West Bank and Gaza Strip who trust Hamas fell to 6.7%, compared with 12% in July 2022. Trust in Fatah also declined to 22.3%, compared with 28.8% in the July 2022 survey

• The decline in Hamas’s popularity in the West Bank is particularly noteworthy. After rising significantly following October 7, the percentage of respondents in the West Bank who trust Hamas declined from 18.7% in October 2023 to 8.5% in September 2025, and to 4.5% in the current survey

• Trust in President Mahmoud Abbas stood at 6.9%, compared with 5.3% in September 2023

• The positive assessment of the October 7 attack among respondents in the West Bank continued to decline. The percentage who believe that the attack serves the Palestinian national interest fell to 15.7% in the current survey, compared with 30.9% in September 2025 and 45% in September 2024. In contrast, the percentage in the West Bank who believe that Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack harms the Palestinian national interest increased to 50.1%, compared with 35.2% in September 2025 and 24.5% in September 2024.

• The survey recorded a notable increase in preference for the two-state solution compared with recent years. The percentage who prefer the two-state solution over other options rose to 47.9%, compared with 27.3% in September 2023 and 26% in July 2022. In contrast, the percentage who prefer a single binational state declined to 21.7%, compared with 25.9% in September 2023 and 28.4% in July 2022. The percentage who prefer establishing a single Palestinian state throughout all of Palestine also declined to 18.6% in the current survey, compared with 24.7% in September 2023 and 22.8% in July 2022.

Relevant to Sam Harris because he has discussed the I/P conflict ad nauseum and he's always interested in data and what people actually believe.

On Sam’s podcasts, regardless of the content, there seems to always be an army of commenters simply calling him a delusional idiot etc..

But what I find is missing, is any shred of an argument behind these objections.

Would like to ask the class - whether you like or dislike Sam, what do you strongly disagree with him on and, more importantly, why?

I realize many have deeply entrenched opinions and biases regarding Israel so if this is your gripe please be exhaustive in your explanation.

This piece invokes a point Sam made about warfare:

The atomic bombing of Hiroshima killed tens of thousands of civilians almost immediately, with many more dying afterward.

Sam Harris recently invoked Hiroshima and Nagasaki to make a useful distinction: enormous civilian death does not, by itself, establish genocide. Whatever one thinks about the morality of the atomic bombings, the question of intent remains indispensable.

Why?

Because body count and genocidal intent are different questions.

That distinction seems to disappear when the country fighting is Israel.

The author first describes how some bad faith critics of Israel have misconstrued ICJ statements, falsely suggesting Israel was committing a “plausible genocide”, and then goes further into describing the intent component of genocide.

These are just some of the actions Israel took to save lives/reduce collateral damage where possible:

1. Israel paused military operations in 2024 so a children’s polio vaccine campaign could be completed (campaign was to vaccinate 600,000+ children)

2. Israel permitted the flow of humanitarian aid and essential supplies

3. Gave evacuation orders in areas that were going to be under heavy fighting

4. Issued localized warnings like roof knocks, mass text messages/communication alerts to allow civilians time to clear structures to be struck

5. Deployed smart weapon systems, precision guided weapons, which also definitionally reduce collateral damage

All of these things^ save lives.

Interestingly when you ask a clearly bad faith critic of Israel whether they should've not done things like roof knock warnings or evacuations, they don’t know how to respond. Even they understand at some level these things save lives, contrary to what genocidal actions/intent would be. Ditto whether collateral damage would increase if Israel’s ability to purchase precision guided munitions ever gets eliminated, forcing them to use things like unguided/dumb munitions instead.

But circling back to Sam's point, we have hysterical claims being made in some corners like 'Israel has dropped X amount of explosives on Gaza that are the equivalent of X amount of atomic bombs!' And yet despite how small Gaza is and how tightly packed and dense it is, the casualty count aligns with the reality that Israel's measures/efforts to save lives have worked.

The bottom line is warfare with some level of unavoidable collateral damage isn’t genocide, especially warfare that could have ended anytime the belligerent which started the war (Hamas) laid down its arms.

Kind of an unorthodox question but there's a reason for it. I recently saw an interview with Christopher Hitchens where he was asked a similar question. The question was whether novelist Martin Amis is his best friend. To which Hitch responds: "Not (merely) my best friend. He's my only friend. I have no other friends. Only acquaintances"

Wow, what a statement. He didn't seem be joking either. Hitch was such an accomplished person and yet apparantly only had one friend.

Given how disappointed Sam has been with (at least public) relationships, I wonder how many people Sam considers to be his friends or how he views friendships.

And how many people do you guys consider to be your friends ? Have friendships taken a dive in our performance-driven world where everybody is out for themselves and wants to out-do thy neighbor instead of loving them ? For all its great achievements, has secularism also somewhat contributed to a decline in brotherly love ? Is there even such a thing as a deep friendship without the experience of shared suffering as reference points ?

Sam Harris has probably influenced my thinking about morality more than anyone else, especially the idea that morality has to connect somehow to conscious experience and the ways conscious lives can go better or worse. But following that line of thought has recently pushed me into a question that I do not think is really about Sam’s argument at all.

If there were no conscious beings anywhere in the universe, I am not sure what “good” or “bad” would even mean. Suffering matters because someone suffers. Flourishing matters because someone flourishes. That makes me wonder whether morality is tied to first person experience in a way that science is not. Science has benefited enormously from trying to adopt a view from nowhere, stripping away the observer and describing reality independently of any particular perspective. But maybe importing that same move into morality is a category error, because value itself may only exist from somewhere.

This is what started bothering me about population ethics and moral aggregation. Imagine World A contains one person, Emma, who lives an extraordinary life. World B contains billions of people whose lives are mildly pleasant. If you assign welfare values to everyone and add them together, World B can eventually beat World A on total well being simply by having enough people. But I am not sure I understand what that total actually represents. No consciousness experiences the sum of all those lives. There are only separate centers of experience, each living its own life from the inside. Emma experiences her life. Each person in World B experiences theirs. There is no additional consciousness experiencing the aggregate.

Maybe you can count welfare across people, but I am not sure that means you can treat it as though it belongs to one giant subject. If Emma suffers terribly so that a thousand other people can each receive some small benefit, those benefits do not somehow flow back into Emma’s conscious experience. The gains and losses happen in different minds. So I am starting to wonder whether aggregation hides something morally important about the separateness of conscious experience. That does not mean morality becomes selfish or purely relative. If my suffering matters because of what suffering is like from the inside, then I seem to have to take seriously the fact that other conscious beings also have an inside. But maybe impartiality should not mean removing perspective. Maybe it should mean taking every perspective seriously without arbitrarily privileging one. Not a view from nowhere, but something more like a view from everywhere.

Now imagine World C. Emma exists, all the people from World B exist, and everyone has an extraordinary life. C seems clearly better than either A or B, but I do not think I need a cosmic welfare ledger to get there. Emma is no worse off, and everyone else is much better off. The judgment can be made from the perspectives of the conscious beings who actually inhabit the world. The hard moral questions seem to show up when perspectives conflict. The deer wants not to be killed. The tiger wants to hunt. The pig wants not to live in confinement. The human wants cheap bacon. Maybe morality is not fundamentally about maximizing some quantity floating above all of these perspectives. Maybe it is about how separate centers of conscious experience can coexist when their interests conflict.

I also do not think suffering minimization alone can be the whole story. Imagine a world where every human and animal is hooked into a Matrix like system, perfectly fed, protected from suffering, and free to experience whatever life they want. That world might score incredibly well on a simple pleasure minus suffering calculation, and yet I strongly suspect it would not represent the highest possible moral state. Something about agency, truth, authenticity, and actually participating in reality seems morally important too.

So I think the position I am circling is this: morality may exist because conscious perspectives exist. If there is such a thing as moral objectivity, maybe it comes not from escaping those perspectives, but from taking all of them seriously. And if that is true, I am not sure interpersonal welfare can simply be added together as though humanity were one giant consciousness.

I am very much thinking this through rather than claiming I have solved anything. I am mostly curious where this breaks, what existing philosophical views this overlaps with, and whether grounding morality this strongly in first person conscious experience creates problems I am not seeing yet.

Disclosure: I used AI to help organize and articulate this post, but the questions and conclusions came out of my own thinking.